Dawn was well past, the sun climbing into the sky as John wandered around the gardens looking for something useful to do. The vegetable garden wasn’t really doing much yet, but there were some seedlings in the greenhouse that might need thinning, and he could check the garden beds to see if they needed weeding.
But just as he was heading off towards the shed, movement caught his attention, a form over on the lawn that was familiar enough that he still sat up and took notice whenever he saw him. He kept walking, trying to act nonchalant, but out of the corner of his eye, he watched Baron dart forward, then jump back again, then step sideways. He was sparring with someone, but with a hedge in the way, John couldn’t quite see who.
He kept going, stopped to examine a birdbath for the simple excuse of turning around and glanced over at the lawn again…
Suddenly he was gripping the sides of the birdbath, overwhelmed by the surge of rage that vaulted through him, then engulfed in a confusion equally as powerful, as he wondered what the hell he was so angry about.
Baron stood on the lawn, a singlet shirt doing little to hide his rippling muscles, while Kwan faced off against him in loose tracksuit bottoms and a t-shirt, his form poised, his balance superb.
John’s first thought was that Baron had found a new pet, and he felt an instant hatred towards Kwan for being the one he’d chosen. On the heels of that thought was firstly the reminder that John didn’t give a fuck who or what Baron was doing anymore, regardless of the fact that he still felt sick to his stomach whenever he thought about Kajus. Then there was the even more pertinent point that Kwan wasn’t gay, so whatever he and Baron were doing was nothing but training, and so what the hell was John getting so worked up for?
As much as he tried to pretend it wasn’t the case, he knew Baron wasn’t out of his system yet. Independence and self-determination were noble goals, but he still dreamed about his alpha at night, still woke up cold and alone, and this morning, he’d stroked himself to completion, a vivid image in his mind of Baron’s face, those powerful hands a phantom touch against his skin...
Fuck, he disgusted himself sometimes.
Forcing himself to turn away from the sight of his former boyfriend getting hot and sweaty with another man, John stalked off, trying to get his head around his own emotions. It wasn’t just his anger that sometimes shocked him. All his emotions were as unreliable; fear, jealousy and even joy all sneaking up to throw his fragile world into chaos. Other people never seemed to have that problem. He’d seen Caroline get angry, but she’d yell a bit, swear a couple of times, then go and get on with whatever task needed doing next. Aaron got jealous, but he’d make a joke, and smile, and pretend it wasn’t a problem. Mark had been over the moon when he’d presented his new son to Baron, but he hadn’t made a fool of himself, or got so lost in the moment that he wasn’t able to keep an eye on the pup and make sure he didn’t wander off too far.
So what was wrong with John?
Without realising it, he’d wandered right through the vegetable garden, past the orchard and was now heading towards the rose beds; once again, he’d got so lost in thought that he hadn’t paid attention to where he was going.
Andre was there, going through some stretches, and as John watched, he neatly folded himself over, head approaching his feet as he pulled himself down, his forearms hugging his calves. Then his hands unfurled themselves and he set them firmly on the ground, lifting his legs in a graceful arc so he was standing on his hands, back arched, body perfectly still as he rested upside down like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Andre never had a problem with his emotions. John had seen him kill people, seen him threatened with death, seen him disagree with Baron, and even Caroline at times, and he’d never once lost his temper, or cried at an inopportune time, or showed the slightest fear when faced with a daunting challenge. There was something Andre knew, that John had never learned.
Andre heard the light scuffing of feet against gravel, feeling a trace of annoyance that he couldn’t even finish his simple stretching routine without being interrupted. Since Tank had left, people seemed to have assumed Andre was taking his place, despite the fact that Silas officially ranked above him. But ‘approachable’ had never been an apt description of Silas, so everyone had chosen the next-best target for their mundane worries and menial requests, and Andre was rapidly understanding why Silas was so adamant about refusing to be alpha.
He waited a moment longer, feeling the muscles in his arms and shoulders warming nicely with the effort he was expending... then he swung his legs down, rising gracefully to a -
“John?” he said, startled to see the young man standing there watching him. Of everyone on the estate, this was one of the few people he had absolutely no objection to being disturbed by. His promise to Baron that he’d find a way to talk sense into John about the ranking order was no small task, and he suspected that it was going to take a few solid weeks of building a rapport with the young man before he had anything like a decent chance of success. “Something I can do for you?”
John looked him up and down, a slow, intimate perusal that Andre had come to understand meant John was pondering what he perceived to be a complex situation, weighing up the best way to deal with it. And while the intense once-over was a little unnerving, Andre far preferred it to the other possible reaction John tended to have to unsettling situations, which was to start breaking things.
“You do meditation and shit, right?” John asked.
Andre knew better than to start second-guessing the lad before he’d made his point clear. “Yes, I do. It’s a standard part of an assassin’s training.”
“Why do you do it? I mean, why is it part of the training?”
“It helps us focus, to centre ourselves and improve our concentration. We learn to pay attention to small details, like faint noises or subtle changes in temperature. It also grounds us mentally; we learn to calm our emotions, to understand our own motivations, and to see beyond the small details in a situation that we might not like. Sometimes keeping an eye on the bigger picture is necessary to keep motivated to complete a task.”
“Hm.” John looked away across the lawn. Andre could see a couple of rabbits playing near the edge of the forest, where overgrown bushes gave them a convenient bolt-hole, and there were a handful of birds flitting about in the branches of the trees. Though whether John noticed any of these details was anyone’s guess. “Could you teach me?” he asked finally, his tone almost challenging. But Andre had learned by now that that was simply John’s way. As a child, he had never been asked to perform a task, he had been ordered, and though he’d come a long way in terms of diplomacy, something of that confrontational style remained.
“I could,” Andre said, deliberately not committing to anything in particular. “What are you hoping to achieve by learning to meditate?”
“I want to learn to control my emotions,” John said, a statement so blunt and out of the blue that Andre had to work hard not to display any of the immediate triumph he felt. If he’d needed an excuse to spend time with the boy, to get to know him better and develop some sort of bond with him, John had just handed it to him on a silver platter.
“It’s a worthy goal,” Andre said, choosing his words carefully... and then he realised it was better to be direct. For all his lack of tact and confrontational ways, John could read other people like a book, and Andre made a mental note never to try and lie to the young man. “I’m actually glad you asked,” he said honestly. “Given that you’re not spending time with Baron anymore, I’ve been thinking maybe you could use a mentor.”
John gave him that unnerving once-over again. “Okay. You’re kind of cool.” He glanced over at the lawn again, then back at Andre. “Teach me to stand on my hands like you were doing before.”
It was lunchtime on the shifter estate, but just as Alistair was heading for the kitchen to make himself a sandwich, his phone vibrated, then let out a gentle chiming sound that had him cursing and reaching urgently into his pocket to drag the thing out. An alert came up on the screen, and with a curse, he suddenly turned on his heel, nearly crashing into Kwan who was coming down the hallway behind him, and raced for the stairs.
Upstairs in the IT office, he quickly pulled up a more comprehensive report on a computer – one of the three that were dedicated to scanning the news feeds for suspicious keywords – and then swore fluently. On a regular basis, he had to sort through reports that had a low-level alert attached to them, things that mentioned wolves, for example, or howling. An article might get a medium level alert if it contained multiple keywords or mentioned paranormal activity, and then there were high level alerts, the kind that meant seriously classified information had made it into the public sphere and all hell was about to break loose. The report in front of him was one of the latter.
“You mother-fucking pile of dog shit, I cannot believe you just did that,” he muttered to himself, and then yanked his phone out again, dialling Baron. “Come upstairs to the office,” he said, the instant Baron answered the phone. “And bring friends. We have a situation.”
Less than a minute later, Baron, Caroline, Skip and Andre piled into the room, and the sound of heavy boots on the stairs suggested a few more people on their way as well.
“What?” Baron asked curtly, and Alistair didn’t bother explaining. He just pulled up a video on the screen – one that had been aired only a few minutes before on a 24-hour news channel – and let it speak for itself.
“Police are appealing to the public for information on this man,” a serious and perfectly coiffed news presenter told the camera. A photograph of Miller appeared on the screen, and Alistair cringed as he heard a chorus of curses behind him. “Formerly an intelligence operative for MI6, Jack Miller has been missing for several months and is strongly suspected of having joined an international terrorist organisation. We must emphasise that if you see this man, do not approach him. He is to be considered armed and extremely dangerous. Police are urging anyone with information to call the number you can see at the bottom of the screen.”
When the video finished, there was a stunned silence in the room as everyone digested what they’d just seen.
“That’s awfully public for the Noturatii,” Andre said, after a heavy pause.
“You don’t think they’re changing their tactics, do you?” Kwan asked, having appeared in the doorway behind them. “They wouldn’t actually tell the public about us, would they?”
“He has a point,” Caroline said, a deep frown on her face. “As far as the public are concerned, right now Miller’s just another ordinary, human criminal.”
“They’ve never given the public either our names or our faces before,” Andre argued. “This is breaking into new territory.”
“I’m not disagreeing with you there,” Caroline said. “But nonetheless, there’s a big difference between naming Miller as a terrorist and outing him as a shape shifter. There are multiple lines in this scenario, and just because they’ve crossed one of them, doesn’t mean they’re going to cross all the others.”
“So what do we do?” Kwan asked. Alistair had heard his name whispered in a few quiet circles lately, and he seemed to have become something of a constant shadow to Baron. Nothing had been confirmed yet, but Alistair suspected that something important was in the works for the young man.
“Work this to our advantage,” Alistair answered the question, his bent for strategy and conspiracy kicking into gear now that the shock had worn off. “Let’s keep in mind that ever since he joined us, Miller’s been more or less confined to the estate. There’s an extremely slim chance that anyone’s laid eyes on him in the last six months. But this now gives us the chance to plant some information where we want it to be found. We take Miller, get him spotted somewhere in Lancaster – with a security team at his back, of course,” he added, as some of the faces looking back at him seemed rather alarmed by the idea, “and then some well-meaning member of the public calls him in, and he goes swiftly back into hiding. It confirms our position in the Lancaster area, it doesn’t tell the Noturatii anything they don’t already know, and if we’re careful about it, it doesn’t put Miller at any undue risk of harm.”
“Get Miller up here,” Baron instructed. “I’m not making any firm plans that are going to put him in danger without his input. But at the same time, if we’re going to put one over on the Noturatii, I think we all have to realise that we’re going to have to play the game their way for a little while.”
“Well, while we’re at it, there are a couple of other things we should think about,” Alistair said, pulling up a file he’d been putting together on the subject. “Skip’s been doing a little digging for me since our last meeting. We know the Noturatii have some of us on file. Mark, for example, Caroline, Tank, Miller. But thanks to Skip’s various hacking jobs,” he said, giving her a wink, “we also have a number of them on file. And Sean, your cop friend,” he said, nodding to Baron, “confirmed that one of them is the same man who was wandering around the Lakes District with that picture of Tank.” He scrolled down the screen, then opened a photograph. “Steven Chu. His real name, strangely enough. I’d have thought the Noturatii would go to a little more effort to give their staff code names or something. But anyway... A few of our contacts have confirmed seeing him loitering around Lancaster, asking the locals about us. So if we’re setting out to make ourselves seen, there would be nothing terribly difficult about arranging a little meet and greet...” He gave them a wolfish grin.
Melissa looked up from her computer screen as Leon came into the room. “So what’s the story?” she asked.
Leon crossed over to her desk and placed a set of keys in front of her. “Dr Evans has gone missing,” he said succinctly. “I found those near the lift in the carpark of her apartment building. Her car was still there. Checked her apartment.” He sat down at his own desk, leaning back in his chair and resting his ankle over his knee. “There’s mail in her letterbox, dirty dishes in the sink, no sign of anything being disturbed or removed. As far as I can tell, she left work on Wednesday afternoon and hasn’t been seen since.”
Melissa swore softly under her breath. “Have you checked her phone?” she asked, more out of desperation than because she thought it would do any good.
“I left three messages yesterday and tried it again this morning. It’s switched off and going straight to voicemail. She hasn’t logged into her email account, either.”
“God damn… Those bloody shifters. They took her, didn’t they? Because of the… no, wait a minute,” Melissa interrupted herself. “You don’t think… she wouldn’t have faked her own kidnapping and run off, would she? She was never particularly brilliant in the lab, but… I don’t know. I’d never have picked Evans for the deserting type.”
Leon shook his head. “Most people who decide to desert the Noturatii try to make it look like a kidnapping, but there’s always something they can’t quite bear to let go of. A family photo, a laptop, a diary. Even though they’re trying to make things look normal, there’s a natural compulsion to try and leave things neat and tidy; they close bank accounts, or delete old emails. But there’s no sign of anything having been disturbed in her apartment, and no suspicious activity on her work files. If she planned this herself, she did a far better job of it than ninety-nine per cent of people ever do. But aside from that, we have to remember that until recently she was working on the shifter captive, who is now M.I.A., so to speak. So if he started telling his rescuers what he knew, Evans would have been at the top of the list for some revenge.”
“Great,” Melissa snapped angrily, glancing around for something to throw. Unfortunately, her computer was the only thing immediately within reach, and she wasn’t foolish enough to destroy it over one scientist. “So, if they’re smart, then they’ll start interrogating Evans, and god knows what she’ll end up telling them.”
“It’s not the first time one of our members has gone missing,” Leon reminded her, far too calmly for her liking. “I’ve already sent orders for all the access systems to be updated. Her passwords, fingerprints or iris scans won’t be able to access anything in any of our systems. We have a number of fail-safes in place for this very situation. And I’ll set up traces on Evans’ phone, credit card and bank accounts. Standard protocol. If anything moves, we’ll know about it. Do you want to tell her team the news, or shall I?”
“I’ll come down and let them know,” Melissa said, curling her lip in distaste at the task. “But probably best if you come along. If Evans is leaking information about her team, they could do with a few pointers to make sure they’re maintaining their own security protocols. I don’t want any more breaches!”